Better Than You (The Walker Family Series Book 3) by Lauren Gilley

could feel Tam glaring at her through the walls as she glanced down the narrow, dark hall that stretched away from the landing.
    Mike caught the hem of her sweater between two fingers and tried to tow her through the open door beside them, but she stood rooted in place. “Depends. How much noise are you planning to make?” She swatted him away and his smile became exasperated. “What?”
    She folded her arms and watched him rake a hand through his hair. “It’s just a little…uncomfortable is all.”
    “What, that my best friend is sleeping down the hall?”
    “Yes.”
    “But it’s not uncomfortable that you’re sleeping with someone else?”
    He said it so calmly, and with such a bland expression, it took a moment for the full effect to hit Delta, and then guilt gave a sharp tug at her conscience. Here she was turning her nose up because his friend was asleep down the hall from them, while she’d as much as admitted to playing two men against each other. She hadn’t planned on saying anything, but her sudden wash of shame brought the words up out of her mouth before she could stop them. “I haven’t been with Greg since I started seeing you,” she said, arms still wrapped around her middle, almost flinching as she looked up into his face.
    She thought he almost smiled, but he caught himself. “So when’s that? Since today?”
    “Since your stupid ass came into my store trying to destroy the whole perfume counter, okay?” She threw up her hands in defeat. “I am not sleeping with both of you.”
    His smile was still in check somehow. “That’s probably a good thing for Greg. No way would he measure up.”
    “Do you ever get tired of being so charming?” she asked with a sigh, and his smile finally broke, white and brilliant.
    “You like it.” He hooked a finger through a front belt loop on her jeans. “Come on, I’ll give you the grand tour.”
     
    **
     
    His bedroom was dominated by a wall of windows that showcased the skyline as a net of lights against a black on indigo backdrop. Delta stared at the pinpricks of yellow through the gaps in the vertical blinds as she caught her breath, the gray satin sheets sticking to her damp skin. Mike thought he was some kind of pimp or ladykiller or some such bullshit with his king size bed – at least, that’s what she’d wanted to think until she’d remembered him crowding her out of her queen at home. And she’d quit berating the satin once she felt it against her skin. And now she lay on her back in the dark, planning her escape and hating the idea of it.
    There was a soft hissing sound as the sheets parted and Mike’s hand slid across her stomach and hooked around her hip. No, I have to leave, she thought, but let him pull her into his chest. He was on his side, propped up on the arm that wasn’t wrapped around her, and even in the dark, there was enough ambient city glow to make out the whites of his eyes, the green irises looking black. Delta glanced away from them and out somewhere over the shadow that was his shoulder.
    “I should probably get going,” she said, and heard hesitancy in her voice. On some level, she wa nted to see if he would protest; wanted him to, even.
    “What time do you have to be at work tomorrow?” he asked, fingers drumming slowly against her hip.
    “Nine,” she admitted, knowing what he would say.
    “ So tell me what time to set the alarm and you can stop by your place to doll yourself up on the way in,” he didn’t ask, but told her.
    If she hadn’t still been flushed and limp, she might have argued. How had he not figured out that the male chauvinist routine didn’t work with her? She wasn’t someone who was told what to do. But when her eyes found his again, she thought there was a certain softness to them that wasn’t the product of shadows or her imagination. And as his hand went up and down the curve of her waist, she remembered the way he’d taken her hand in the bar parking lot the night before,